Your creative process on the 404

hadizzle · **Joined:** Wed Apr 17, 2013 12:52 am **Posts:** 4

My 404 just came in the mail today and I was messing around with it and noticed its kinda difficult to make drum patterns on it. The pads aren't velocity sensitive and are more like buttons than actual pads. I was wondering do you all mostly just use drum breaks and loops? How many of you actually play and record the drum pattern on the SP itself?

How effective is the 404 as a stand alone production station to you? Do you mostly come up with drum patterns and loops on a computer and drop it into the 404 or do you just get the sounds you want and start jammin on the sp?

The feeling I get from the SP is you kind of already have to have an idea of what you're trying to do instead of just experimenting and coming up with a beat on the SP itself. Am I right or wrong?

Just curious, let me know the steps you go through when making your music. Im just tryna get an idea of how to go about getting started making beats.

Euclid Ov Oåklånd · **Posted:** Wed May 15, 2013 6:43 am

hadizzle wrote:

My 404 just came in the mail today and I was messing around with it and noticed its kinda difficult to make drum patterns on it. The pads aren't velocity sensitive and are more like buttons than actual pads. I was wondering do you all mostly just use drum breaks and loops? How many of you actually play and record the drum pattern on the SP itself?

you can start with drum loops or you can use a midi pad controller with the pattern sequencer to get velocity in your drums.

How effective is the 404 as a stand alone production station to you? Do you mostly come up with drum patterns and loops on a computer and drop it into the 404 or do you just get the sounds you want and start jammin on the sp?

I personally do both

The feeling I get from the SP is you kind of already have to have an idea of what you're trying to do instead of just experimenting and coming up with a beat on the SP itself. Am I right or wrong?

one of the best things is you can do creative experimental type sounds with any source sound materials

Just curious, let me know the steps you go through when making your music. Im just tryna get an idea of how to go about getting started making beats.

LAZER BEAR · **Posted:** Wed May 15, 2013 6:56 am

I use the SP404sx as my only production tool, I sometimes use breaks but most of the time I load up drums and tap them out. I use the pattern sequencer for some stuff, other times I use the 99 bars technique, and other times I just record myself playing a beat live. I find that the SP suits my needs as an all in one unit, I am also an avid anti software guy. I use audacity to record beats but that's it. Other than the samples I use, I never have a "plan" for how I want my beat to sound, I just lay shit down and see where it takes me. Its all about fucking around with the SP and different stuff.

L.C.W · **Posted:** Wed May 15, 2013 6:40 pm

You just need to learn the 404/sp way of making beats (not that this is the only way).
Try and use the resample method to make beats on the 404, it works alot better and faster than using the sequencer in the traditional way. This workflow really plays to the 404s strengths and is a more liberating beat making technique. You can use looped or chopped drum breaks or seperate random drum hits, just resample a few seconds of you playing drums live, then loop em, then resample the drum loop while play sample chops live, then loop and repeat.
OR after you have your drums go to the sequencer make the patten length go for 99 bars with no metronome volume, and record in loop of you drums for as long as you want, then record over the top some sample chops etc, this way you don't commit everything and you can go and adjust volume of pads etc.
just make sure to use mono samples more than stereo ones so you can play more at once

sleepy eyes · **Posted:** Wed May 15, 2013 7:05 pm

i like to press the buttons and hope something good comes out

hseiken · **Posted:** Thu May 16, 2013 11:49 am

Drums are easy, mang. Don't think in terms of 'I gotta do it all in this one take!'...

As well, don't think 'I can't velocity this ish, so I can't even get ghost notes!'. There's 12 pads.

Put these two together and you have the formula for 12 different volumes and even samples for one piece of equipment.

Enjoy.

Your creative process on the 404

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